


scrambled

by michpat6



Series: aftermath [14]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: F/M, can you tell I thought of this when I was making myself breakfast the other day, half existential crisis half domestic fluffy goodness, link is uncomfy around the master sword for obvious reasons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:16:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28576623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michpat6/pseuds/michpat6
Summary: Link wakes up slowly. He wakes up slowly, he wakes up comfortable, and he wakes up warm.He wakes up cozy, holding a pillow, which is weird because he only has two and they’re both under his head.So imagine his surprise when the pillow he’s holding makes a noise and shifts in his arms, when he feels toes brush his calf, and when he feels it sigh.
Relationships: Link & Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Series: aftermath [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2033743
Comments: 10
Kudos: 140





	scrambled

Link wakes up slowly. He wakes up slowly, he wakes up comfortable, and he wakes up warm.

He wakes up cozy, holding a pillow, which is weird because he only has two and they’re both under his head.

So imagine his surprise when the pillow he’s holding makes a noise and shifts in his arms, when he feels toes brush his calf, and when he feels it sigh.

He opens his eyes and is met with a mess of blonde hair.

 _Zelda’s_ hair. Zelda, who is fast asleep in his arms. Zelda, who is definitely _not_ a pillow.

Zelda, who makes a displeased noise when he lifts his arm from her stomach, who rolls over to face him, and who reaches for him.

She reaches for him, and when her fingers brush his shoulder she scoots close, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her face in his chest with a content sigh.

Link stares down at her, frozen. He doesn’t dare breathe. 

She’s wearing the Champion’s tunic. He already knew this, of course, he _gave_ it to her for Hylia’s sake, but it’s just now sinking in that she’s wearing _only his_ _shirt_ in his _bed_. With _him_ right next to her.

And the sun is streaming in from the window upstairs, bathing her in its soft, early morning rays, and she’s wearing his shirt in his bed and cuddling him while she sleeps-

It is- _She_ is, quite possibly, the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

(And he’s seen a lot of things.)

If this were Before, he would be allowed to reach over, pick up the Sheikah Slate off the floor, and snap a photo. But it’s not Before, it’s After, and he can’t. They’re divine coworkers, and nothing more.

But.

_Happy birthday._

They were in her bedroom and they were-they were _close_ , and she had her lips on his neck and she was chanting his name like a prayer-

But.

_Link._

He, in his stupid relief, almost kissed her last night. He almost kissed her last night, he was leaning in, but she put her hands on his chest and was getting ready to stop him so he hugged her instead.

Clearly, something has changed. In the century between Before and After, Zelda stopped wanting to kiss him.

Which he gets, obviously.

But that doesn’t make his feelings any less painful to have.

Zelda stirs, her grip on him loosening as she pulls back and blinks her eyes open, rubbing them a bit. Then she squints up at him, and smiles.

“Hi,” she whispers.

“Hi,” he breathes.

“How did you sleep?”

Does…Does she _not_ notice how close they are?

“Fine,” he manages. “You?”

She thinks, stretching, then answers, “Good, actually.”

(Or does she notice and not care? Why wouldn’t she care?)

It doesn’t matter, because she rolls out of bed with a yawn and stretches again before she crouches and picks up their filthy clothes along with the Sheikah Slate.

“Rest of the laundry is outside already?” she asks, looking back at him, the Champion’s tunic lopsided on her frame and slipping off one of her shoulders, the sunlight illuminating her tousled hair.

Link nods, mute, because _wow_.

She smiles again, and walks out the door.

He gets out of bed once she’s gone and almost stubs his toe on the Master Sword. He waits for it to do something, but it doesn’t. It just lies there on the floor, silent.

He should pick it up. It’s the Master Sword, the sword that seals the darkness, Hylia’s divine weapon that makes him her chosen Hero. It’s integral to his identity, to who he is as a person, to his purpose in this world. It’s a piece of him, and it holds pieces of him in return. It shouldn’t be reduced to an object dirtied on the floor.

_You’re the Hero, Hero, you tell me._

_Happy birthday._

Just looking at it makes him feel nauseous.

Link forces his eyes ahead and goes upstairs, looking out the open window for Zelda.

She’s sitting next to a soap-filled basin, tapping at the Sheikah Slate with a concentrated frown and combing her fingers through her hair. Storm Junior huffs below, and Link glances down and finds the white horse staring up at him.

Then the horse turns its head, looks at Zelda, and then looks back at him. It huffs again.

Link wishes he spoke horse, because clearly the animal is trying to tell him something.

Zelda turns around, and when she spots him she grins. “Spying on me, Hero?”

She’s in an…exceptionally good mood this morning. Calling him ‘Hero’? She hasn’t done that since she did it for the first time over dinner and then shut down for two weeks.

It’s strange, seeing her so happy. It shouldn’t be, but it is. He wonders _why_ she is. What is there to be so happy about?

“No,” he finally answers, forcing a smile back. “Just wondering how you’re going to dry the clothes faster than the flameblade.”

Laundry is an all-day affair because, while washing their clothes takes at most twenty minutes, taking them from soaking wet to bone dry takes the rest of the day because they leave small piles next to his flameblade in the sun. However, Hateno has been getting colder, lately, and he only has the one, tiny flameblade.

“I’m not going to figure that out today,” she responds. “I’m looking through the photos you took, if that’s all right.”

Link took a lot of photos in the Wild. He doesn’t even remember what he captured in the beginning.

“Come sit with me,” Zelda beckons.

Who is he to deny her?

As he’s about to open the front door to go outside, the sound of the Master Sword pulsing reaches his ears.

He freezes, glancing back at it over his shoulder. He can see the strange purple light that accompanied the pulsing on Blatchery Plain, when he fought all of those Guardians, and his head spins. He tightens his grip on the door handle, leaning heavily against wall.

“Stop it,” he whispers to the sword, swallowing the burn of bile in his throat. “Please, let me enjoy her being happy today.”

The Master Sword goes quiet, and he waits for the dizziness and nausea to pass before going outside, abandoning his missing pieces on the floor.

Unfortunately, Zelda notices as soon as he’s in her line of sight, unbothered by his half-naked appearance. The Champion’s tunic still sits lopsided on her upper half, and her legs are stretched out, her toes idly wiggling in the grass.

“Not bringing the Master Sword out with you?” she asks.

“No,” he answers, sitting in the grass next to her. “It’s fine.”

She frowns. “But you always have it-”

“It’s _fine_ ,” he repeats, forceful.

(Goddesses, Link loves her, but sometimes she just asks him _too many questions_ and he can’t blame her, she’s a scientist, asking a bunch of questions is in her nature, but sometimes he just needs to be left _alone_.)

Ironic, isn’t it, because alone is anything but what he wants to be.

Zelda stares at him for a moment, and thankfully leaves his tiny outburst alone, going back to looking at his pictures.

Then his stomach growls.

The princess laughs, shutting off the slate and setting it aside. “Hungry?”

His ears get warm and he shrinks, embarrassed. “Maybe.”

“Good thing that I’m cooking breakfast this morning.”

He looks at her, confused. On the second day of her freedom, when he made Endura Shroom Stew on the edge of Hyrule Field and she fell asleep on his shoulder, she told him she never learned how to cook.

“You’ve been making all of the food this whole time,” she adds. “It’s definitely my turn.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t cook?” he voices his concerns. Although Link has definitely had some… _dubious_ meals when he was first learning to cook in the Wild, he doesn’t know if he’d trust Zelda’s attempts at making something edible to not get him sick.

It’s not that he doubts her, it’s just that…Well…

(Okay, maybe he doubts her a _little_.)

But cooking is hard! He’s dealt with food poisoning too many times and _never_ wants to go through it again.

“Zelda,” he starts. How does one tell a princess no?

“I’ve been watching you,” she insists, stubborn as ever. “I think I know how to at least make breakfast.”

And Link trusts her, because how could he not? If she says she can do it, she can do it. “Fine. Just let me set the clothes out to dry, first.”

Breakfast goes like this:

“You’re laughing at me.”

“No I’m not!”

Zelda is smart. Zelda is really, really, really smart. Like, _really_ smart. ‘When she talks about stuff he has no idea what she’s saying’ smart.

It’s almost sad, then, that scrambling some eggs is her downfall.

He doesn’t know how it stumps her. Scrambled eggs are, quite possibly, the easiest dish to make in the world, but Zelda, even with all of that Wisdom in her brain, cannot seem to figure them out.

“You _are_!” she’s scraping burnt egg out of the cooking pot and tossing it to nearby squirrels, scowling as they eat it up. Their last eggs are in a bowl in between them, along with a stick of butter, a bottle of milk, salt and pepper, and a bowl of grated cheese. “If I mess this last try up, too, I’ll go down and buy more.”

“You won’t mess these up,” he tells her. Her frustration at something as simple as scrambled eggs is nothing but endearing. “You have all of the ingredients right, just…think about it.”

She smacks his knee with her eggy spatula. “What do you think I’m doing?!”

Now he laughs at her.

“Stop laughing!” But now she’s laughing, too. “It’s not funny!”

“They’re _eggs_ ,” he manages. “Do you want me to help you?”

He’s been asking for her to let him help for the past twenty four eggs, which translates into three batches of eight eggs that they were going to split that she fumbled. Now they only have eight left, which is enough for one more try.

Pouting, Zelda admits defeat and holds the spatula out to him. “ _Fine_.”

“Keep it,” he says. “Start again.”

He watches her break the eggs into the bowl and whisk the yolks apart with a fork. She reaches for the milk, and he stops her. “Okay, your first mistake is you’re using too much milk. Just pour a little bit into the eggs and mix it around.”

She does, carefully watching his face, and he smiles at her, continuing, “Good. Now put a small chunk of butter in the pot and let it melt. When that’s done, pour in the eggs.”

“How did you learn how to make this?” she asks, listening, dumping the eggs onto the buttered surface.

“A lot of trial and error,” he stops her again when she moves to immediately stir the eggs with the spatula. “Let them sit and cook. When it starts to bubble, then you constantly mix them around.”

Nodding, she stares down at the eggs, gripping the spatula like she’s about to smack him again. “When does the cheese get added?”

“When the eggs are mostly solid. It’ll look creamy because of the butter. Then you do salt and pepper to your liking and stir them around for another minute, and they’re done.”

Zelda laughs again, finishing up the eggs. “It was really this simple? I overthought almost every step.”

“I know,” he tells her. “Sometimes you need to stop thinking so much about a problem and instead ask for help solving it.”

She splits the finished, seasoned eggs onto their plates and hands him his portion along with a fork, saying nothing and watching intently as he takes his first bite.

“Well?” she asks, eager.

The eggs are so, so salty. ‘He desperately needs a drink of water’ salty. ‘ _The ocean_ ’ salty.

“They’re good,” he lies, and in turn watches her take her first bite. Surely she’ll taste all of the salt and-

Her eyes light up and she nods. “Thank you for teaching me, Link. I think I’d like to be the one making breakfast from now on, pitch in a little more.”

 _Damn it_.

**Author's Note:**

> I was making scrambled eggs the other day and randomly had the thought "what if zelda couldn't make these" and here we are


End file.
